


weightless souls

by illinois_e



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Established Relationship, I think that sums it up, M/M, atsumu is hopelessly gay for kita, do not tell him that, he's also secretly a softie, im breaking my head for 10 minutes trying to tag this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:54:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25391971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illinois_e/pseuds/illinois_e
Summary: the concept of kita and him not living close together is as alien to atsumu as the freshly painted white walls of his new flat in osaka. somehow, he'll have to manage. even if he doesn't want to.
Relationships: Kita Shinsuke/Miya Atsumu
Comments: 13
Kudos: 86
Collections: Atsukita Week





	weightless souls

**Author's Note:**

> for atsukita week, day 1: first kiss / **new beginnings**
> 
> hq twt: oh no 🥺🥺🥺 hq end 🥺🥺🥺  
> atskt twt: shut the fuck up 😡 it's atskt week 🥰🥰 let's spread the love 🥰

Atsumu wonders what is the proper etiquette for making demands to your landlord the day after moving in.

Is not something big, or so he thinks. Just a layer of paint in the walls of his room, because the current white hurts his eyes, and _you know, mr. landlord, i’m a professional athlete; gotta keep my eyes sharp_. Or maybe it is because the walls of the room he slept besides Osamu all his life were yellow, and the white feels… wrong, somehow. Like treason, nestled into the hollow of his shoulder blades, heavy and stifling. 

He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to play well under the weight of it.

Though if he applied the same logic to the rest of his life, then this whole city would taste of betrayal. Osaka—skyscraper-ridden, neon lighted Osaka, drowned in a perpetual wave of sound. Osamu said he would get used to it in a week — Suna said Atsumu would get used to it in a week, but Osamu omitted that part, because Atsumu would never take advice from _Suna Rintarou_ , of all people — but Atsumu doubted it very much, first because Osamu was just as stupid as him and rarely got anything right. Onigiri Miya stands unbothered only by the blessings of a minor god they do not know of. And second, because Atsumu just fucking hated Osaka, and he didn’t think something like that could fade in a week.

So he would explain it all to his landlord, and the next day he would paint the walls yellow, and he would sleep like a little baby whose forehead mother has just kissed, and would not spend the night before his first match as an official player for the MSBY Black Jackals awake.

And if the answer was negative, well, he would find himself another place to live. His paycheck allowed him to do pretty much as he pleased—and he would be pleased with a yellow-walled room, a nice garden to play volleyball at, and oh if they had a spare twin brother to lend him, he wasn’t going to refuse that. 

“Can’t sleep?” Kita whispers against his neck. Atsumu cannot see him, which poses no problem as he committed each and every one of his facial features to memory. He would need to, for when— for now. 

_It’s here, at last._

Atsumu lets his fingers follow their dedicated course to Kita’s hair, gray strands soft under his touch. How can someone in their right mind come and tell him that it’s all going to be okay, that they’re going to facetime every single day and that will be enough? Can Atsumu touch Kita’s hair by the screen of a phone? Can he hold Kita in his arms? Can he kiss him?

“Anxious,” he says, which is— not a lie. He is anxious for the match. Atsumu has gotten used to wanting many things for himself: to hear the chant of the crowd by his back, spurring him on and on and on. To have the cameras flashing wildly in front of him, to have his picture on the cover of a sports magazine, praised, adored, loved. “Big match tomorrow.”

He likely wouldn’t play, however, because you had to be a lunatic of a coach to sub a player for another with literally zero practicing time with the current lineup. The times Atsumu tossed to Kiyoomi in the youth training camp don’t count, even though he thinks they should. The whole point of his tosses is that anyone could hit them.

This doesn’t mean he can’t hope.

Kita snuggles against him, and Atsumu has to physically stop himself from doing something ridiculous, like, say, cooing. Instead, he moves just so that he can kiss the top of Kita’s head without disturbing him so. “Yer gonna do good. I know it—ya always do.”

Kita knew for a fact that the chances of Atsumu being called to play were slim, and yet— and yet he acted like he could not be more sure that Atsumu would be the best player of the match. MVP and all that. And Atsumu felt that with every word his heart got bigger and bigger—an inch more and it would fall apart.

Screw the walls and the garden and whatever else. If only he could have Kita with him, then it would be enough. And yet that was the only thing he could not have—because they had talked and talked and then talked some more, and Kita said it as many times Atsumu needed to hear that he wouldn’t be moving to Osaka with him. 

Atsumu wondered how deep he would need to dig before he could uproot Kita from place. But as a luxurious bush that, unwelcoming of the fresh soil it is planted on, withers and dies, so Atsumu knew the same would happen if he convinced Kita to leave Hyogo. And the only thing worse than not seeing Kita would be seeing him get sadder and sadder with each day, knowing it was no fault but his own.

Bad habits die hard, and selfishness is one that never bothered him much, until he received a call from the Jackals with a proposal too good for him to let go.

So he proposed a long distance relationship, and after a second round of long talks and plans designed, Kita agreed. And Atsumu let himself think he was happy with that. Until his last day beside Kita came.

(granted, he knew fully well he was overdoing the drama bit a bit. like, _last day_. it wasn’t like one of them was dying. but atsumu never once in his life denied the fact that he was a dramatic soul to the core. and he couldn’t think of any moment more appropriate to throw in a fit of drama than now.)

“Atsumu,” Kita whispered, using that same stern tone from when he was captain and Atsumu and Osamu would bet which one of them could run the longest before fainting from exhaustion. “Stop thinkin' about it.”

“It's creepy when ya get all mind reader on me, ya know?”

Kita snickered, raising his head so they could look into each other's eyes, before remembering it was too dark for that and falling into Atsumu’s arms again. “Not mind readin'. Ya just held me way too tight right now.”

_Shit,_ Atsumu thinks. Dramatic and clingy. Perfect boyfriend combo.

“Sorry. It's just—” _It's just that I have no idea how I'll manage being so far from ya and the simple thought of it makes me feel physically sick._ “I'll miss ya. I guess.”

( _i am constantly plagued by the thought that i shouldn't have signed with the jackals even though it was my lifelong dream because something that threatens to tear us apart can never feel completely right_ )

Kita’s hands trace indistinguishable patterns over Atsumu's bare chest, fingertips leaving goosebumps wherever they reach—especially those places where the skin is marked red or purple from his fingers and his lips. Atsumu kind of wishes they would never fade. “I'll miss ya too, _I guess._ ” And he laughs at that, laughs at Atsumu and the ridiculous habit to downplay his emotions as if it could somehow protect his masculinity. “So get into that court and make me proud, ‘cause then I can say I had to let my boyfriend go away so he could become Japan’s top setter.”

“And here I was, the fool, believing yer already thought of me as the best setter in the whole world!”

“Best setter of my heart, and of nowhere else. Yet.”

“Shinsuke!” Atsumu shrieks, one hand over his heart for dramatic effect. “Ya wound me so! And in the eve of a match, no less! I need ya to raise my morale, not to break it in pieces.”

(he would let kita do that every night it meant keeping him closer. but it was no good to dwell on things that had already been settled — to atsumu was left the heavy task of wishing for time to cast its magic upon him)

“Then go to sleep. I'll still be here when ya wake up.” Atsumu knew. Kita was going to watch the game, and then they would go to the subway station where he would embark the train to Hyogo. To _home_ , which, for the first time, wasn't also Atsumu’s home. “Told ya I still gotta tidy up the kitchen. How can ya live with only _one_ pan is beyond me.”

“Fine, _fine_.” He grumbles, his arms squeezing Kita once before settling in a comfortable grip. “Only ‘cause I gotta be well rested to show up my full set of abilities. Ya know damn well how to rile a man up.”

“Ya say it like ya don't get riled up by literally everything.” At that, Atsumu opens his mouth for a comeback, but Kita is quicker, and his hand covers Atsumu’s mouth while he buries his face in his boyfriend's neck to muffle the snickers. “Go to sleep, ‘Tsumu.”

Atsumu wants to say a lot of things, _before_ : that he doesn't know what, besides curiosity, made Kita accept his invite for a date, but he thanks it every night; that he's gonna miss nights like these, with after sex cuddles (the best cuddles, in his opinion) and talk, so much that he could feel his eyes watering through their entire exchange; that he's afraid of burning the kitchen to cinders because Osamu is the twin that cooks while he's the twin that stands by his shoulder watching and saying it will end tasting terrible even though he knows it won't; that he'll probably call Kita in the worst possible hours because it's always in these hours that longing strikes the hardest; and that he knows they're taking the best way forward, even though it hurts, even thought his chest feels ripped in two; that he knows the days will be long and the years endless, but he'll manage, day after day, knowing that Kita is thinking of him as much as he's thinking of Kita. He'll manage, if only waiting anxiously for the weekends and holidays when their hands and lips and bodies will find each other again, when the beat of Kita’s heart finds echo on his own.

But that's too much, and knows he'll cry if he tries, and he doesn't want Kita to remember his ugly crying face on the way back to Hyogo. So he says only what he wants to say the most.

“Love ya, Shinsuke.”

Kita sighs, his lips curving into a smile Atsumu feels against his skin for the whole week. “Love ya too, Atsumu.”

* * *

(atsumu doesn't let go of kita’s hand until he has to board the train, and even so, he almost ends up taking a step inside along kita, back to hyogo, back to when he couldn't fathom that someday they would have to grow apart so they could stay together.

atsumu even got the chance to play, after the jackals made a comfortable enough lead for themselves, and his dump shot made the crowd grow wild, though he could only notice how kita’s eyes shone for him. and after they had won, interviews had been given, praising his debut, praising his game, praising him.

_what do you expect from your stay on the msby black jackals, miya-san?_

_i will do my best. so that it is worth it._

the doors are still open. kita is standing in front of them, where it would be easy for him to step back into the station and stay; one more night, one more week, one more month. forever. atsumu knows he isn't going to do that, however. in a sense, he's glad for it. the kita he had fallen in love with was nothing if sure about the paths he decided to take.

“call me when ya get home, okay?” atsumu says, because his throat feels clogged up, and he is scared that if he just stays looking into kita’s face and _wanting_ he's going to have a breakdown at the middle of the station. “be safe.”

kita smiles, does that thing where he squeezes his eyes and then— a tear falls down. then two then three, and then atsumu is crying too. “i'll call ya every day, ya know. i'm not lettin' japan’s best setter slip through my fingers.”

atsumu doesn't answer—can't remember the exact mechanism used to form words with your tongue. instead, he looks at the clock: one minute before the doors close. he takes his chances, one foot in the train, one in the station, and pulls kita towards him. 

“yer never losin' me. _ever_. get yer facts straight, shinsuke.” 

and then atsumu kisses him, because— well, just because. after all that's the magic of it: he wants and wants and wants and does not need to explain himself, find a metaphysical reason for his adoration. atsumu loves simply because he loves, and it is enough.

kita kisses him back, his fingers gripping atsumu’s hips — he hopes they leave a mark — before he pulls away, eyes wide and still wet. “step down! it'll start moving!”

_shit!_ atsumu thinks, and quickly steps down, back to the solid, unmoving floor, almost getting squeezed in two by the door. way go ruin a romantic moment. fucking— well, _time_.

atsumu does not run alongside the train until it leaves his line of sight, nor does kita runs to the back so atsumu can see his face through every window. instead, he mouths _i love ya_ , face visible by the door’s window, and atsumu mouths it back, and then, just like that, he is gone.

back to where he belongs. a small part of atsumu still wishes to belong to the place, but he knows, by the smile still etched into his face during the whole walk back home, that the journey is just as important as the destination. and they're definitely on the right path.

he runs up the stairs, smiles to the girl sitting at the booth, buys a ticket for hyogo, leaving saturday 7pm. he’s gonna have to run fast after practice. he quickly finds out he doesn’t mind.

somehow, he just knows there’s no need for worry. he’s gonna make it work. they’re gonna make it work. he's sure of it.)

**Author's Note:**

> tbh i wasnt going to post this fic, but i read chap 402 today and i just got so emotional... so i decided to give this a chance. i promise yall ive written smth better for day 3 (i think its day 3) so please dont give up on me


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